will; if by accident, after five years. But should she get sick within the time prescribed, she may get communion.

Spanish ladies, at that period, had not yet so far yielded to the benign influence of the gospel, and so far restrained their violence of temper, as to show due mercy to their female slaves.

It may be well to observe a beneficial change, not only in public opinion, but even in the court, by reason of the influence of the spirit of Christianity; so that the pagan more than once reproved, by his mercy, the professor of a better faith.

Theodoret (1. 9, de Græc. cur. aff.) informs us that Plato established the moral and legal innocence of the master who slew his slave. Ulpian, the Roman jurist (1. 2, de his quæ sunt sui vel alieni jur.) testifies the power which-in imitation of the Greeksthe Roman masters had over the lives of their slaves. The wellknown sentence of Pollio upon the unfortunate slave that broke a crystal vase at supper,-that he should be cast as food to fish,and the interference of Augustus, who was a guest at that supper, give a strong exemplification of the tyranny then in many instances indulged.

Antoninus Pius issued a constitution about the year 150, restraining this power, and forbidding a master to put his own slave to death, except in those cases where he would be permitted to slay the slave of another. The cruelty of the Spaniards to their slaves, in the province of Boetica, gave occasion to the constitution; and we have a rescript of Antoninus to Ælius Martianus, the proconsul of Boetica, in the case of the slave of Julius Sabinus, a Spaniard. In this the right of the masters to their slaves is recognised, but the officer is directed to hear their complaints of cruelty, starvation, and oppressive labour; to protect them, and, if the complaints be founded in truth, not to allow their return to the master; and to insist on the observance of the constitution.

Caius (in 1. 2, ad Cornel. de sicar.) states that the cause should be proved in presence of judges before the master could pronounce his sentence. Spartianus, the biographer, informs us that the Emperor Adrian, the immediate predecessor of Antoninus, enacted a law forbidding masters to kill their slaves, unless legally convicted. And Ulpian relates that Adrian placed, during five years, in confinement (relegatio) Umbricia, a lady of noble rank, because, for very slight causes, she treated her female slaves most cruelly. But Constantine the Great, about the year 320, enacted that no master should, under penalty due to homicide, put his slave to

death, and gave the jurisdiction to the judges; but if the slave died casually, after necessary chastisement, the master was not accountable to any legal tribunal. (Const. in l. i.; C. Theod. de emendat. servorum.)

As Christianity made progress, the unnatural severity with which this class of human beings was treated became relaxed, and as the civil law ameliorated their condition, the canon law, by its spiritual efficacy, came in with the aid of religion, to secure that, the followers of the Saviour should give full force to the merciful provisions that were introduced.

The principle which St. Augustine laid down was that observed. The state was to enact the laws regulating this species of property; the church was to plead for morality and to exhort to practise

mercy.

About the same time, St. Peter, archbishop of Alexandria, drew up a number of penitential canons, pointing out the manner of receiving, treating, and reconciling the "lapsed," or those who, through fear of persecution, fell from the profession of the faith. Those canons were held in high repute, and were generally adopted by the eastern bishops.

The sixth of those canons exhibits to us a device of weak Christians, who desired to escape the trials of martyrdom, without being guilty of actual apostasy. A person of this sort procured that one of his slaves should personate him, and in his name should apostatize. The canon prescribes for such a slave, who necessarily was a Christian and a slave of a Christian, but one-third of the time required of a free person, in a mitigated penance, taking into account the influence of fear of the master, which, though it did not excuse, yet it diminished the guilt of the apostasy.

The general council of Nice, in Bythinia, was held in the year 325, when Constantine was emperor. In the first canon of this council, according to the usual Greek and Latin copies, there is a provision for admitting slaves, as well as free persons who have been injured by others, to holy orders. In the Arabic copy, the condition is specially expressed, which is not found in the Greek or Latin, but which had been previously well known and universally established, "that this should not take place unless the slave had been manumitted by his master."

About this period, also, several of the Gnostic and Manichean errors prevailed extensively in Asia Minor. The fanatics denied the lawfulness of marriage; they forbid meat to be eaten; they

condemned the use of wine; they praised extravagantly the monastic institutions, and proclaimed the obligation on all to enter into religious societies; they decried the lawfulness of slavery ; they denounced the slaveholders as violating equally the laws of nature and of religion; they offered to aid slaves to desert their owners; gave them exhortations, invitations, asylum, and protection; and in all things assumed to be more holy, more perfect, and more spiritual than other men. !!!

Osius, bishop of Cordova, whom Pope Sylvester sent as his legate into the east, and who presided in the council of Nice, was present when several bishops assembled in the city of Gangræ, Paphlagonia, to correct those errors. Pope Symmachus declared, in a council held in Rome, about the year 500, that Osius confirmed, by the authority of the pope, the acts of this council. The decrees have been admitted into the body of canon law, and have always been regarded as a rule of conduct in the Catholic church. The third canon :

Si quis docet servum, pietatis prætextu, dominum contemnere, et a ministerio recedere, et non cum benevolentia et omni honore domino suo inservire. Anathema sit.

If any one, under the pretence of piety, teaches a slave to despise his master, and to withdraw from his service, and not to serve his master with good-will and all respect. Let him be anathema.

Let him be anathema is never appended to any decree which does not contain the expression of unchangeable doctrine respecting belief or morality, and indicates that the doctrine has been revealed by God. It is precisely what St. Paul says in Gal. i. 8: "But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you beside that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema." 9: "As we said before to you, so I say now again: If any man preach to you a gospel besides that which you have received; let him be anathema." It is therefore manifest, that although this council of Gangre was a particular one, yet the universal reception of this third canon, with its anathema, and its recognition in the Roman council by Pope Symmachus, gives it the greatest authority; and in Labbe it is further entitled as approved by Leo IV., about the year 850, dist. 20, C. de libell.

Several councils were held in Africa in the third and fourth centuries, in Carthage, in Milevi, and in Hippo. About the year 422, the first of Pope Celestine I., one was held under Aurelius, archbishop of Carthage, and in which St. Augustine sat as bishop

of Hippo and legate of Numidia. A compilation was made of the canons of this and the preceding ones, which was styled the "African Council." The canon cxvi. of this collection, taken into the body of the canon law, decrees that slaves shall not be admitted as prosecutors, nor shall certain freedmen be so admitted, except to complain for themselves; and for this, as well as for the incapacity of several others there described, the public law is cited, as well as the 7th and 8th councils of Carthage.

The great St. Basil was born in 329, and died in 379. His works; called “Canonical," contain a great number of those which were the rules of discipline, not only for Asia Minor, but for the vast regions in its vicinity. The fortieth canon regards the marriages of female slaves. In this he mentions a discipline which was not general, but was peculiar to the north-eastern provinces of the church, requiring the consent of the master to the validity of the marriage-contract of a female slave: this was not required in other places, as is abundantly testified by several documents.

The forty-second canon treats in like manner of the marriages of children without their parents' consent, and generally of those of all slaves without the consent of the owner.

LESSON VI.

Ir may not be improper now to take a more particular view of the civil world, its condition, and of those wars at the instance of which it had been, and then was, flooded with slaves. As an example, we select the middle of the fifth century:

Attila, to whom the Romans gave the sobriquet, "Flagellum Dei," Scourge of God, was driven by Etius out of Gaul in the year 451; and the following year, pouring his wild hordes down upon Italy, conquered Aquillia, Pavia, Milan, and a great number of small cities, and was in the attitude of marching on Rome. The Emperor Valentinian III., who was a weak prince, panicstruck, shut himself up in Ravenna; and his general, Etius, who had been so victorious in Gaul, partook of the general fear when invaded at home. The destruction of Rome and its imperial power, the slaughter and slavery of the Roman people, and the extinction of the church appeared probable. Under such a state

of things, the emperor and his council prevailed on Leo the pontiff himself, supported by Albienus and Tragelius, men of great experience and talent, to undertake an embassy to the enemy's camp, then on the banks of the Minzo. This embassy was accompanied by a most grand and numerous retinue-a small armyarmed, not with the weapons of war, but with the crosier and crook. Nor did Attila attempt to hide his joy for their arrival. The most profound attention, the most convincing demonstrations of his kindness to them, were studiously displayed by him.

The terms proposed were readily accepted, and Attila and his army, a tornado fraught with moral and physical ruin to Rome, the church, and the civilized world, silently sank away far behind the Danube.

Nor is it strange that the great success of this embassy should have been attributed to some intervention of miraculous power during the dark ages that followed;—and hence we find that, four hundred years after, in one of Gruter's copies of "The Historica Miscella," it is stated that St. Peter and St. Paul stood, visible alone to Attila, on either side of Leo, brandishing a sword, commanding him to accept whatever Leo should offer; and this is. quoted as credible history by Barronius, ad ann. 452, no. 47-59, and has been painted by Raffaele, at a much later period. The idea was perhaps poetical, and this piece alone would have immortalized the artist. But it is truly singular that this appearance of Peter and Paul should have gained a place in the Roman Breviary, especially as it is nowhere alluded to by Leo, nor by his secretary, Prosper, who was present at that treaty, nor by any contemporary whatever. The facts attached to Attila, in connection with this treaty, were:-His army was extremely destitute, and a contagious and very mortal disease was raging in his camp; in addition to which, Marcian had gathered a large army, then under march for Italy, to join the imperial forces under Etius, while, at the same moment, another army, sent by Marcian long before, were then ravaging the country of the Huns themselves of these facts Attila was well advised. These were the agencies that operated on his mind in favour of peace with Valentinian. To us the idea seems puerile to suppose Jehovah sending Peter and Paul, sword in hand, to frighten his Hunnish majesty from making slaves of the Roman people.

Would it not be more consonant with the general acts of his providence to point Attila to his diseased army; to their conse